


Will Things Have Changed?

by Wonderland_Awaits



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Study, College Student Stiles, Coming Back, I hate tagging, Leaving Home, Reflection, Stiles makes a decision, through S2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-15
Updated: 2013-03-15
Packaged: 2017-12-05 10:16:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/721924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wonderland_Awaits/pseuds/Wonderland_Awaits
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His life had been one freak show after another for so long that he didn’t think he could take it anymore. College was going to be different. It had to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Will Things Have Changed?

**Author's Note:**

> This one just wouldn't let me go until I wrote it all down. 
> 
> The title comes from the song "Hello, I'm Delaware" by City and Colour which was also the inspiration for the fic as a whole.

He drives down the empty lanes of the highway, road blurring beneath the wheels of his Jeep, eyes focused on the dark, empty space ahead of him. His original plan was to go out for a short drive to clear his head because he was about to drive himself insane.  
That had been the plan but before he knew it he’d thrown some clothes into a duffle bag along with a few other essentials (like an old Gameboy, the novel he was currently reading, and his laptop and charger) and hit the road, heading for home. If driving was supposed to be clearing his mind he was doing it wrong but he knew that he couldn’t have stayed in his dorm anymore—he would have lost his fucking mind.

See the problem wasn’t so much that he couldn’t fix his situation before now, but rather that he wouldn’t. He’d made an agreement with himself when he left for college that he wasn’t allowed to return to Beacon Hills until he had finished his first semester of the year. His life had been one freak show after another for so long that he didn’t think he could take it anymore. College was going to be different. It had to be. 

So he had stayed for fall break and convinced his dad that he had been too sick to come home for Thanksgiving. He felt bad for lying to his father but he knew that there was no way he could set foot in that town and not get sucked back into the supernatural web that seemed to have spun itself around everything he loved there. 

But his self-imposed exile was almost at an end—by his calculations, he had less than three hours until he would pull into the driveway in front of his house. He was equal parts nervous and excited with a tinge of abject terror in there for good measure.  
Sure he missed his hometown. He missed Scott like a missing limb, he missed being there to yell at his father about his eating habits (which he still made a point to do over every phone and skype call), and even though he was loath to admit it, he missed a certain broody alpha werewolf. 

He and Derek weren’t anything officially and not even the pack had any idea what the nature of their relationship truly was. They knew that the two often smelled of one another but they thought it was just close proximity from working together and being around one another when the entire pack got together. But that wasn’t it at all. While they weren’t an official couple, he and Derek spent a ridiculous amount of time together—like no it was insane how much time they spent together when they weren’t supposed to be anywhere else and didn’t have anything else to do. 

The stupid amount of time they spent together during Stiles’ last year of high school and the subsequent summer had occurred for rather innocuous reasons in the beginning; Derek needed help deciphering an ancient text, Stiles needed to learn how to not get his ass kicked by a rogue group of faeries, they both needed to get away from the demands that the pack placed on them, whatever. The point is, it started off totally innocent. Stiles had no idea that the hiding out together thing and asking for help thing were something other than what they appeared to be. But he figured it out pretty quickly. 

And by quickly, it means that Stiles was completely oblivious to his own feelings or those of the alpha until six months or so into their whole “hanging/hiding out” thing they had going on between them. It wasn’t like he didn’t know that he was attracted to Derek but he certainly didn’t realize that he actually had feelings for the guy (because he never stopped to let himself entertain the notion) until that afternoon when Derek called him an idiot and kissed him soundly until he was breathless and all he could focus on was their harsh, mingled breathing and the sound of his own heart pounding away at his eardrums. Yeah—he was totally and utterly fucked. 

Or so he thought because he’d assumed Derek had kissed him because he was bored, or because he had wanted Stiles to simply shut up, or maybe the full moon was too close and Derek got irrationally horny during the full moon (which Stiles knew was ridiculous, having been around Derek through more than a couple of full moons), or maybe Derek had just gone temporarily insane. Because he couldn’t have kissed him willingly and that meant Stiles was fucked because that meant there was something compelling the alpha to act that way (he swore if it was faeries he’d scream because he hated those fuckers). He was fucked because he cared about Derek and he knew that there was absolutely no way in hell those feelings would be reciprocated. 

But of course, he had been wrong. Like, the most wrong that a person can be because Derek actually liked him. A lot. How’s that for a shock to the system?

But considering this was Beacon Hills and not a fairytale, things didn’t work out like boy kisses boy, boy falls for boy, boys live happily every after—literally not a chance. Derek had his commitment issues (Kate fucking Argent…Stiles couldn’t even think her name without becoming livid) and Stiles didn’t want to get attached to anyone before he left for college, let alone someone like Derek. Not when he could see himself being with the man for a very, very, very long time (read: forever). 

Derek wasn’t just anyone; he was stubborn and possessive and just plain rude sometimes and Stiles knew that whatever they had would be long term if he ever let it get even a little bit serious. So they simply went about their non-relationship for the remainder of Stiles’ time in Beacon Hills while hiding it from the pack. No need to inform them if it wasn’t serious, right? Right. Or that’s what Stiles had convinced Derek. 

When Stiles left it was one of the hardest things he had ever done. He was leaving everyone and everything he loved. His best friend was attending another college, his father would be left completely alone without Stiles’ mom around now, and he was left reeling, worried sick about the two people he cared about more than life. 

On top of all of that, he was walking away from an ambiguous relationship with a taciturn lycanthrope (fuck yeah 2350 on the SATs) and he didn’t know what to do with any of his feelings. So rather than dealing, he simply shut down. He said his goodbyes to his friends (see: the pack) and left Scott with unshed tears clinging to his eyelashes. His goodbye with Derek was already finished and inconclusive, just like every other part of their whatever the hell it was. After that? Well after that there was nothing else to do but get in the car and drive. 

His father followed him up in his car and helped Stiles to get unpacked in the dorm room that he would call home for the next year. It was cramped and his roommate seemed like the weird type of guy who spent his entire life on the internet (hey, Stiles limited his internet usage and besides he was using his internet for research! Or so he told himself and anyone else who would listen). But aside from that it seemed like a pretty standard move-in day and at the end of it, he hugged his dad goodbye and prepared himself to start building a new life away from the chaos that was Beacon Hills.

Now, four months later, Stiles remembers all of his reasons for not going back, remembers all of the bad things that happened to him in that town, remembers all of the hurt and anguish that being part of a werewolf pack brought with it. He remembers it and it makes him glad that he managed to stay away, to build a new life outside of this.

But he also can’t stop himself from remembering the love that he felt when he was with his father or his friends or the way that everything in Beacon Hills had a good memory attached to it along with the bad or the way he never felt safer than when he was in Derek’s arms. He remembers all of that too and somewhere deep down he recognizes that he can’t stay away from all of that forever. Not only that but he doesn’t want to. 

He makes a decision right there and then, driving past exit sign after exit sign on the California highway—he won’t stay away forever but he will build a life with friends outside the pack, outside the supernatural that plagues his home. He will use college as an opportunity to better himself, to further his ambitions. He figures that he owes himself at least that much. 

But on the flip side of that decision, he tells himself that he will come back to Beacon Hills when he graduates. He’ll come back to the pack and his dad and his (not) boyfriend. In the interim, he’ll see them on his breaks and if some supernatural shit goes down while he’s around? He’ll do everything in his power to help. He knows now that he doesn’t need to completely run away from his past because it’s something that makes him who he is. 

It’ll be a long time before Stiles calls Beacon Hills home again but he knows that it’ll happen. He only hopes that he has the willpower to build the foundation for himself that he knows he deserves. He hopes that his distance when he’s away at school doesn’t push anyone he loves away. He hopes that he can make two different parts of himself mesh without a messy collision. Mostly he just hopes that he’ll be happy and that his friends and his dad will be safe and happy as well. 

He presses the gas pedal slightly, urging the Jeep onward just a little faster. 

It’s time for him to resume play on the life he’d been so hell-bent on leaving behind and find a way to live his life in harmony.

If he can make mountain ash somehow form a complete freakin’ circle, he can make the two halves of his life whole, right? Right.

**Author's Note:**

> I really hope you liked this. Feedback is always appreciated and if you want to talk to me on tumblr, I can be found at broomsupbitches.tumblr.com 
> 
> :)


End file.
